Plaster of Paris gets hot.

[EternalOptimist]

The story differed depending on the medium.

Quote from the Daily Mail

"A school was ordered to pay £19,000 today after a 16-year-old girl lost most of her fingers when she put her hands in a bucket of plaster of Paris during a school art lesson. The teenager was attempting to make a sculpture of her own hands during a lesson in January 2007 when the horrific accident happened. The plaster set around her hands and neither staff nor paramedics could get it off during the lesson at Giles School, in Boston. Within minutes the effects of the chemicals in the plaster had started to cook the girls' hands from the inside…"

that fits with the facts.
the kids make an impression in clay, then pour the plaster in to make the sculpture. The kid shouldnt be putting her hands into the plaster, but as I say, it happened before , so it may have been a prank.

horrific

[daviejones]

Some kids are just idiots. Unfortunately sometimes an idiot gets hurt really quite badly and the teacher gets 100% of the blame.

Part of the teacher's role is supervision. The teacher should have been supervising her and I cannot help but think that if the teacher supervised properly, this may not have happened.

[dang65]

One question why didnt someone smash it off?

If neither teachers nor medics were able to get the plaster off then one must assume that smashing it off wasn't an option. I imagine it gets to a kind of hard rubbery state during setting, where it is too soft to shatter, but too hard to just pull off?

[Clippy]

A mate of mine, from uni days but who went to a different uni to me, lost most of his fingers in a chemistry experiment gone wrong.

He mixed the wrong amounts of chemicals which exploded and took most of his fingers off.

He was a bit of a fkwit so, at the time, I well believed he probably wasn't paying attention when the instructions were being given by the lecturer.

The uni was taken to court by the HSE and cleared I believe but he claimed this did not affect the settlement he got via insurance from the uni.

[Diestl]

If neither teachers nor medics were able to get the plaster off then one must assume that smashing it off wasn't an option. I imagine it gets to a kind of hard rubbery state during setting, where it is too soft to shatter, but too hard to just pull off?

Usually it easier to pull off when hard!!

[Moscow Mule]

Part of the teacher's role is supervision. The teacher should have been supervising her and I cannot help but think that if the teacher supervised properly, this may not have happened.

I do agree with you to an extent, but this is a 16 year old kid. You are supposed to be able to give them an instruction and have them follow it.

Teachers are increasingly being forced to follow the train of thought "what is the stupidest thing these kids could do with the materials we are about to use" before letting them loose.

I do also feel sorry for the girl as it's going to be a couple of decades before they can graft a robotic hand for her. By which time, she'll probably have got used to not having one. At least they weren't doing body casts...

[Diestl]

I do agree with you to an extent, but this is a 16 year old kid. You are supposed to be able to give them an instruction and have them follow it.

Teachers are increasingly being forced to follow the train of thought "what is the stupidest thing these kids could do with the materials we are about to use" before letting them loose.

I do also feel sorry for the girl as it's going to be a couple of decades before they can graft a robotic hand for her. By which time, she'll probably have got used to not having one. At least they weren't doing body casts...

What are you talking about, have you seen Robocop?

[Moscow Mule]

What are you talking about, have you seen Robocop?

Where are the mega-corps when you need em eh?

[NotAllThere]

... but not before his hair had frizzed to the extent that he looked like a burst sofa, and he also had a face like a madman's @rse....

I think you'll find he looked that way before the incident, m'lud.

[shaunbhoy]

I think you'll find he looked that way before the incident, m'lud.

Only from some angles.